Field
The present disclosure relates to a technique of processing image data captured by an image capturing unit provided in an image display device.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a mixed reality (MR) technique and an augmented reality (AR) technique have been known as techniques for achieving real-time and seamless mixing of real space and a virtual space. As one such technique, a video-see-through head-mounted display (HMD) is utilized. In an image display system based on this technique, a video camera captures an image of an object that approximately matches the object as viewed from a pupil position of a wearer of the HMD. The wearer of the HMD can observe, through a display panel of the HMD, an image in which computer graphics (CG) overlap with the captured image.
The image display system executes given processing on an image captured by an image capturing unit in the HMD and transmits the resultant image to an information processing device (personal computer (PC)) to perform calculation for rendering the CG to be superimposed on the captured image. After executing image processing to obtain an image to be displayed in the information processing device, the image display system transmits the image to be displayed to the HMD to display the image on a display panel in the HMD. Recently, a demand to increase the number of pixels in an imaging device to achieve higher image quality has led to an increase in a total amount of data to be processed and transmitted, resulting in a large-scale system.
In order to resolve this issue, various techniques for compressing an image and then transmitting the compressed image have been actively developed. However, since the compression process itself consumes a large amount of system resources, such a technique is not necessarily an effective solution since HMDs need to be small and light weight. To address this, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2013-251781 discusses a technique for separately processing images, e.g., four full high-definition (HD) images, obtained by splitting a high-resolution, e.g., 4K, image, and a low resolution image, e.g., a single full HD image, obtained by resolution conversion, and then the resultant images are transmitted and combined.
The splitting technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2013-251781 produces the split images showing a total data amount that is larger than a data amount of the original captured images. Thus, the process or transmission amount of data needs to be further reduced, depending on the system employing the technique.